Brother of Abington's Barbara Tassinari: Murder verdict against her husband 'couldn't have gone any other way'

John Tassinari of Abington has been sentenced to life in prison for 2008 the murder of his wife, Barbara, after a jury on Monday took just three hours to find him guilty. He apologized, but the victim's brother was not there to hear it. “I wouldn’t give him the dignity of listening to him,” Frank Scolaro said.

John Tassinari stood in the Brockton courtroom where he had just been convicted of his wife’s murder, and where he was about to be sentenced to life in prison without parole.

He apologized to his wife’s family and to his own.

But the victim's brother, who ran to her side that night in April 2008 and held a gun to John Tassinari while police raced to the scene – was not there to hear it.

“I wouldn’t give him the dignity of listening to him,” Frank Scolaro, 47, the brother of Barbara Tassinari, said Monday.

Jurors in Brockton Superior Court took just three hours to convict John Tassinari, 32, of first-degree murder in the April 22, 2008, killing of his wife, 29, outside their home at 55 Pilgrim St.

In returning the verdict Monday, the jury agreed with the prosecution’s argument that the engineer acted deliberately and with extreme atrocity and cruelty when he emptied two semiautomatic pistols, hitting his wife 18 times, including 10 shots to the head.

“It was an execution,” Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz said after the verdict was read and after Brockton Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Locke issued the life sentence.

Defense attorney William F. Sullivan of Quincy had argued for a manslaughter conviction, saying Tassinari shot his wife in a fit of rage after she told him she had been having an affair.

In arguing for the murder conviction during the 10-day trial, prosecutors sought to prove two key points: That Tassinari planned the killing, then carried it out in an uncommonly brutal and merciless fashion.

They called witnesses who testified that John Tassinari controlled his wife through constant telephone calls, by monitoring her spending and chatting with her online while he worked.

In closing arguments, with John Tassinari’s six-gun collection lying on a courtroom rail, they presented an online conversation that underscored their belief that the killing was premeditated.

“Message from Babs: ‘I loved you with my whole heart and soul. I thought you were the greatest thing since sliced bread. I really did. But I overlooked the obsessive, controlling parts. You have a tracking device on me. I am exhausted trying to appease you. You are suffocating me,’” prosecutor Sharon Donatelle read.

John Tassinari’s reply: “But it’s too late now. It seems you already have decided how it’s going to end.”

Another prosecution witness, the medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Barbara Tassinari, testified that the bodily damage was so extensive that it was hard to tell exactly how many times she’d been shot.

Defense testimony centered on what Sullivan called attempts to save the failing marriage, and on John Tassinari’s state of mind. A defense-hired psychologist testified that John Tassinari needed to feel and appear in control of things, and that he suppressed things he found unpleasant or troublesome until they caused his emotions to boil over.

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Tassinari testified in his own defense, saying the couple had money and marital problems.

He said Barbara Tassinari had requested an “open marriage,” in which either partner would be free to pursue extramarital relationships. Tassinari testified that he rejected the idea, and that she “would pursue the open-marriage idea without my permission.”

Sullivan said that on the night of the killing, John Tassinari “snapped” after his wife told him she’d been having an affair.

But jurors refused to accept that explanation – and Frank Scolaro says they did so rightfully.

“It couldn’t have gone any other way,” he said at his home Monday afternoon, mere yards from the driveway where his sister died.

The former Tassinari house, an off-white raised ranch with blue shutters, lay quiet and empty Monday, in stark contrast to the chaotic scene neighbors witnessed the night of the killing.

“Justice was served, absolutely,” said Anne Irwin, a neighbor who said she witnessed Barbara Tassinari fall in the driveway. At first, she said, she’d thought Tassinari had shot his dog.